WOW--today was the scariest day EVER!!!! The other day I took an online quiz called "What is your greatest fear?" The result was storms. The quiz analysis was very accurate. It said: "You watch the Weather Channel daily. You have an admiration for Benjamin Franklin, as lightning makes you shudder with fear. You consider the movie Twister a horror flick." That is all very true, and today I found out exactly why I am so afraid of storms--because they are freaking scary! This afternoon I experienced my first real TORNADO, and it was not pleasant. There were a couple of tornado warnings when I lived in Natchez, and I did hear the tornado sirens go off there once, but those storms ended up skirting around Natchez. So this was the first time that I truly experienced a tornado. These are some pictures that Greg took at the beginning and ending of the storm. Greg is much braver than I, and he is an experienced tornado survivor, so it didn't bother him as much as it bothered me. We even had some golf ball sized hail here! It was terrible.
At about 4:30 this afternoon we were in Petersburg with the dogs at the vet. On our way home we heard that there were tornado warnings in the counties just west of us, and so as soon as we walked in the door, I checked weather.com. It said that we were under a tornado warning! A tornado warning means that a tornado has been sighted in your area. We could hear some thunder, but it wasn't raining or anything--but we decided that we should still pack up the animal children and head over to the funeral home which has a nice, sturdy brick basement. Thankfully we did, because within a few minutes of arriving at the funeral home, the tornado sirens started going off. Tornado sirens mean that there is officially a tornado somewhere nearby. That has to be the worst sound ever! We ran down to the basement, and by this point I was pretty much freaking out. The sirens stopped after a few minutes, and we went back upstairs to check things out. It turns out that the first round of sirens was just kind of a warning--to get people into their basements--because the real storm arrived about ten minutes later. Greg was outside taking pictures and checking out the sky when he saw what appeared to be a funnel cloud forming. I was already in the basement with the animal children, and he quickly joined us. I thought for sure the funeral home was going to blow away. I didn't hear the typical "train sound" that tornadoes make because the hail hitting the building, combined with the thunder, was too loud. I called my friend Linda who lives just south of Springfield, and she said that the weather was clear down there. I told her that we were having a tornado, and she got online to monitor the weather radar. She assured me that we would be okay and told us when it looked like the storm had passed Athens. It was about that time that the sirens stopped, and we went back upstairs. I think that was pretty much the worst experience I've ever had!
Fortunately Athens didn't receive any serious damage that we could see. We were a little worried that we would come home to find my car covered with hail welts, but Stryder seemed to weather the storm just fine. Our tornado continued on clear to Champaign! So it must have been a pretty strong storm. The tornado was followed by some other heavy thunderstorms, which are supposed to continue through the evening, but those storms don't seem so bad after what we had this afternoon. Oy vey, what a day! I often have tornado nightmares anyway, so I can't imagine what kind of dreams I'll have tonight. We're just glad that everything turned out all right.
